4 ms·

You'll always find the freaks in society if you're authentic about your freakish nature, to address one point in your comment. It's simple but I really do have

by creep 8y ago

You'll always find the freaks in society if you're authentic about your freakish nature, to address one point in your comment. It's simple but I really do have this kind of emergent, creative, slightly anarchist experience in every day life simply by stepping out the front door. As long as I have the presence of mind to recognize myself in someone else (and empathy, and genuine other-love with that self-love) something fantastic will happen, something strange that changes me and others. Other than this I really don't know what you're saying about burning man, but I think the concept as I understand it can flourish under modern city-conditions, maybe only in such conditions. There never will be a time when the dam isn't about to burst, unless it already has and we're in that moment of filling up again. That's what's wonderful, there is no permanence. That essential property underlies everything, there is nothing to worry about, no potential lost just funneled elsewhere. Maybe when people recognize this they won't go looking for love at burning man. I'm sure it's still worth it for the surrealism. edit: and you can't get by on just a feeling and a quick session of analysis.

aaroninsf 8y ago
Another way to put what I was trying to say about the genuine uniqueness of living in a culture of plenty, instead of scarcity, is that it was a particularly affecting variation the experience of immersion in a different culture. The closest comparison I have in my own life is what it's like when you're somewhat self-aware and find yourself in a culture where the social norms and expectations are different. In the case of my own experience at BM, I consistently found a hybrid synthesized culture which clearly emerged from the people who chose to be there and put themselves 'out', but also, transcended any particular subculture or precursor. I used to randomly encounter and take long walks with another artist who'd started going around the same time, and a recurring topic for us was what happened when the ravers colonized. My take was that if it was a choice between them and their MDMA-fueled energy, and the much darker FSU punk acid/speed/alcohol faction which was the primary counterbalance for a long time, I'd take the ravers. But that changed thing and dilluted the weird equilibrium and skewed it a lot more towards "conventional" (sic) rave culture. Which is a fine thing but not the same exactly. Yet a different take would be to simply observe that never and nowhere have I experienced what it means to live in a city for a week, year after year after year, which is intentionally constructed by and for and populated by a lot of people who take their psychedelic experience seriously (c.f. Pollan's Changing Your Mind). That sounds hokey or derisively dismissible, and it absolutely meant a lot of superficial edges which were... ...but it also created a social space that is truly a foreign place, not least, when it's inhabited not for a night or a weekend but for a week or more. Totally unsustainable, under the requirements of current civilization, and not advisable IMO even if it were. But as a place to suspend the norms for a week and be reminded that this is all of it a collaborative consensual construction and what we assert as "normal" is merely the artifact of our own limitations and historical moment? Unspeakably valuable and unique in my experience...

by creep 8y ago

aaroninsf 8y ago

Another way to put what I was trying to say about the genuine uniqueness of living in a culture of plenty, instead of scarcity, is that it was a particularly affecting variation the experience of immersion in a different culture. The closest comparison I have in my own life is what it's like when you're somewhat self-aware and find yourself in a culture where the social norms and expectations are different. In the case of my own experience at BM, I consistently found a hybrid synthesized culture which clearly emerged from the people who chose to be there and put themselves 'out', but also, transcended any particular subculture or precursor. I used to randomly encounter and take long walks with another artist who'd started going around the same time, and a recurring topic for us was what happened when the ravers colonized. My take was that if it was a choice between them and their MDMA-fueled energy, and the much darker FSU punk acid/speed/alcohol faction which was the primary counterbalance for a long time, I'd take the ravers. But that changed thing and dilluted the weird equilibrium and skewed it a lot more towards "conventional" (sic) rave culture. Which is a fine thing but not the same exactly. Yet a different take would be to simply observe that never and nowhere have I experienced what it means to live in a city for a week, year after year after year, which is intentionally constructed by and for and populated by a lot of people who take their psychedelic experience seriously (c.f. Pollan's Changing Your Mind). That sounds hokey or derisively dismissible, and it absolutely meant a lot of superficial edges which were... ...but it also created a social space that is truly a foreign place, not least, when it's inhabited not for a night or a weekend but for a week or more. Totally unsustainable, under the requirements of current civilization, and not advisable IMO even if it were. But as a place to suspend the norms for a week and be reminded that this is all of it a collaborative consensual construction and what we assert as "normal" is merely the artifact of our own limitations and historical moment? Unspeakably valuable and unique in my experience...